TecTREND

TecTREND is a collaborative analysis tool, which supports ministries and administrative bodies of national security (Ministry of Defence, Ministry of the Interior and the Federal Chancellery) in the recognition and evaluation of technological change relevant to security and defence. An understanding of the relevant technological developments is of importance to law enforcement and armed units in two respects: first, such an understanding lays the basis of deployment concepts, training and gear and, secondly, it improves the understanding how new technologies influence adversaries’ options (for example state actors or non-state violent groups) and how this, in turn, impacts on law enforcement and armed units.

Hence, TecTREND pursues an integrative approach: As new technologies have been observed systematically only from a sector-specific and not from a holistic point of view, the project defines a comprehensive catalogue of tasks and skills in order to assess the relevance of new technologies for security and defence. Moreover, the collaborative analysis tool integrates three methods (patent analysis, media-based actors and technology observation and interdisciplinary experts’ knowledge pooling) and thereby enhances the validity of the results. Furthermore, TecTREND guides the user through the analysis process by a menu-based structure and facilitates the assessment of relevant information and nexus.

Therefore, TecTREND differs from other approaches to and processes in technological observation in four essential points. First, the whole-of-state tasks and skills portfolio lays a basis to assess technologies relevant to security and defence. Secondly, the identified technologies, products and systems are assessed according to their relevance to ministries and administrative bodies tasked with national security. Thirdly, a prototypic, IT-based, collaborative application is developed which enables the identification and assessment of technologies through the aforementioned integrated-methods- approach. Lastly, the project lays a focus on the observation of key actors in technological change. Thereby, TecTRENDS wants to show who the developers of security- and defence-related technologies are and how technological change impacts on the leverage of potential adversaries to state authority (e.g. organised crime or terrorists).

TecTRENDS supports ministries and other administrative bodies of national security in early recognition of relevant technologies and the systemic changes linked to it. Hence, the project gives momentum to strategic planning and the management of research and equipment